Retail sales, meanwhile, grew by 10.7 percent year-on-year in April, 0.6 percentage point higher than a year earlier but 0.2 percentage point lower than in March.

Online retail sales amounted to 1.92 trillion yuan ($278 billion) in the first four months of this year, up by 32 percent over the same period last year.

The job market remains stable. The unemployment rate in 31 major cities dropped below the March level and has remained below 5 percent since September, the NBS said, adding that China created 4.65 million jobs in the first four months of this year, approximately 220,000 more than the same period last year. Steady job growth indicated an uptrend in the national economy, Xing said.

The expanding investment in real estate remains an engine for the country's economic growth, said Liu Liangdong, an analyst at China Merchants Securities Co.

Highlighting challenges facing the economy, Xing of the NBS said that both domestic and foreign environments were complicated and appear set for change, and "structural imbalance" remains a deep-rooted problem.

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